


Comfort

by roselightsaber



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Gen, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 11:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9121627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roselightsaber/pseuds/roselightsaber
Summary: Reflecting on a quote from the novelization - "Baze Malbus had always needed comfort more than humor."





	

_Baze Malbus had always needed comfort more than humor.  
_

It’s a concept Chirrut had a hard time with, early on. Humor was his go-to defense, the easiest way to diffuse discomfort or disagreement. A precocious child, he got away with joking with his elders who might not have tolerated it from anyone else--but Chirrut was smart, he was funny, he was _special_ , so he escaped scolding. It was a crutch he leaned on from time to time, maybe more than he should, favoring it over emotional confrontation nine times out of ten. And while he childhood wasn’t as bleak as that of many of Chirrut’s fellow temple younglings, and was downright idyllic compared to the life of the average Jedha native, he’d still had plenty of opportunity for heartbreak that more often than not ended up too far buried beneath jokes to be resolved.

Chirrut was sent to the temple by his family at ten years old, an honor, a reflection of his skills. His father read him stories of the Jedi when he was small, taught him about the beautiful legacy of which he’d be a part. Leaving his family behind was no easy feat, but Chirrut was raised to believe he was destined for greatness.

 

* * *

 

 

Baze was hardly raised at all, except in the desperate, survivalist ways of the city. Poverty was soaked deep into Jedha, a caustic venom cycling constantly through the holy city that seemed so far from its mystical roots. Baze was born in it--one of so many. His mother had been born in it, too, and never escaped; hardly more than a child herself when Baze was born, she had neither the resources nor the lingering threads of hope that some in Jedha City managed to hang onto. She did what she could--first selling tea, made from foraged herbs, and when those dried up, she stole. There was never enough for both of them, and Baze was keenly aware of the sacrifices being made for him. So as soon as he could he took any job he could--some honest, most not. He first killed for money at thirteen, and it bought them just enough to eat, but illness was something much, much more expensive than hunger. Shipments to Jedha are next to nonexistent, only slightly less bleak than the completely depleted natural resources of the moon. Except for kyber, of course, but that was an impenetrable prospect--until it was the only prospect. So, Baze decided, it would have to do.

He stormed toward the Temple of the Whills, a one not-even-a-man-yet army. There were Jedi there. He didn’t know much besides what everyone on Jedha knew of the mysterious warriors: they took the only thing Jedha had left to offer, they left the city in shambles, and called themselves heroes and peace-keepers. Baze had no moral quandary whatsoever about approaching this supposedly holy place with a heavy, modified blaster in hand (plus three other weapons hidden on his lanky frame); Jedha’s poor did not have the luxury of spiritualism. He expected to shoot his way into the temple, grab what he could--kyber, ideally, but artifacts would do. Perhaps he could steal medical supplies directly; these secretive bastards probably had a stash that Jedha’s poor would never see. He expected to fight, maybe to die, but he did not expect his first confrontation to be with a calm, smiling boy even younger than himself.

“Are you a pilgrim?” The boy asked, and Baze thought for a fleeting second about shooting him, or maybe knocking him out with the butt of his very visible weapon. But this kid must have been an absolute idiot if he wasn’t being intentionally obtuse, and, spoiled temple brat or not, Baze was not at all thrilled with the prospect of killing children.

“You know I’m not.” He raised his weapon but he had no real intention of firing. This idiot might be a free ticket inside.

The smaller boy took a deep breath, utterly unfazed by the sight of a gun larger than his skinny little legs pointed dead at his heart. “This is a place of peace, my friend. Put down your weapon.”

“I need something. You’re going to take me to it.”

“I feel so much pain in you, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend.” He jabbed him in the chest with the blaster and then--what then? It was all a blur. The small boy snatched the weapon, twisting his wrist painfully in the process, and whipped it back around at him. It struck him in the throat and he fell, coughing, struggling to grab for another blaster.

“No,” The boy said simply, serenely, and struck him again, so fast that Baze wasn’t sure what direction it had come for. This kid--was he a Jedi? “Don’t reach for it,” He stated plainly. “Let me help you. No weapons.”

Baze reached for his own throat in disbelief, and as he lurched forward to retaliate, the boy dropped down next to him, no evasion, no attack, just planted his hands on Baze’s shoulders and looked at him with sad, pleading eyes. “Please let me help you. It hurts. I--feel you hurting.”

Was he faking him out? This was not the sort of opponent he’d prepared for--ever. “Listen.” He snapped. “What kind of supplies do you have here?”

“Medical supplies.” Not a question. Dark eyes bored into Baze’s soul. “Someone you love is very sick. But you don’t have to do this.”

“Our supply lines are the same as the rest of this rock, so it’s not a lot.” Baze felt a surge of anger rise in him at the other’s casual, even amused tone. “I’ll give you what I can if you promise to quit trying to shoot me. Or anybody else.”

Every fiber of Baze’s being screamed to punch him, kick him, jump up and strike back--anything at all. No one was trustworthy. And _shit_ , his throat ached where he’d struck him with his damned Jedi tricks. But he was also thirteen, and desperate, and half-starving, and maybe, _maybe_ that was what made him agree to follow the boy he’d soon know as Chirrut Imwe. But maybe it was something more.

 

* * *

 

 

Baze’s mother died when he was fifteen. By then, Baze had returned to the temple at least ten more times, each time more broken and desperate than the last, each time meeting that strange boy who had forced him to trust him. The bond wasn’t exactly friendship, not yet, but he found a solace in him that he couldn’t explain. That he never learned how to explain. And maybe that was what brought him back once more after he had nothing left to protect, nothing to steal, nothing to need from him. Chirrut told him the Force brought them together.

Baze punched him in the face for the barest suggestion that his loss was the divine will of anything or anyone. It wasn’t as satisfying as he would have liked, tainted with the memory of their first fight, Chirrut’s speed, his near-foresight, and the lingering suspicious that Chirrut had let him hit him.

And almost a full year later he returned again, too full of darkness to keep going anywhere else but the only place that had ever even begun to welcome him. He stared at Chirrut’s feet because he couldn’t look him--or anyone else--in the eye, and asked, like a man defeated, what it meant that the Force brought them together. Chirrut smiled and reached for a hand that evaded his touch almost frantically. He didn’t try again just yet, but promised to tell him everything.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s no surprise that Baze was a good fighter. Shock instead comes in the form of his devotion, his commitment to the temple and to the faith that he’d dismissed outright for so much of his life. And, maybe even moreso, the real surprise was the friendship that blossomed between him and Chirrut. Maybe it’s just that Chirrut wore him down--that was certainly how the younger man would describe it. Baze became the one more eager to claim that the Force brought them together. After all, he’d grown up with nothing, done terrible things just to live, and now he was within the temple walls, slowly healing body and soul, able to give back to Jedha and to influence other guardians to do the same. _There’s no zealot like a convert_ , Chirrut had said to him once, laughing, and the younger man never believed the old cliche more than when Baze smiled right back at him. But no matter how much progress he made, no matter how much healthier he looked, how much more he prayed and meditated and trained and _swore his devotion_ , Chirrut couldn’t shake some unnameable _sense_ about Baze. Under it all, at his core, he could still feel the same unfathomable darkness he’d seen in that vengeful, despondent young boy that had threatened him years ago.

Chirrut did not see the curious fact that he’d somehow tripped and fallen in love with Baze as a complication. Baze would have, if he’d realized Chirrut’s feelings or his own, at the time. In Chirrut’s mind it was an advantage, something that would make sure he never gave up on the other, though that was sure to be a difficult prospect. And it was while he was musing over this idea that Baze finally caught him staring and flashed him a smile--imagine, that tall, skinny boy who’d looked like he’d never smiled in his whole unfair life, now a handsome young man beaming at him sweetly. It made Chirrut weak in the knees.

“Keeping an eye on me?” Baze asked. They were allegedly on duty, but the second they caught each other’s eyes the rest of the world faded away.

“Aren’t I always?”

“That you are,” He said with another wistful smile, strolling over from his post to sling an arm around Chirrut’s shoulders. The younger man thinks of how thin he’d been when they met, how weak and hollow he’d looked. But now the affectionate half-hug Chirrut found himself pulled into felt strong and solid, invited his thoughts to drift to how it might feel to get closer to him.

He gave in to the urge, just a little, reaching up to pat Baze’s chest playfully. “Devoted Guardian Malbus leaving his post?” He couldn’t help teasing though somewhere in the back of his mind, in the periphery of his Force-attuned senses, Chirrut still felt that deep wound that he couldn’t begin to understand, much less to help him heal. “To what do I owe the honor?”

The other regarded him a long moment, eyes searching his face for something Chirrut couldn’t identify even through the Force. “To necessity,” He answered after a while, no further explanation offered.

“Yours or mine?” He laughed faintly, not because it was funny, but because the way Baze looked at him was too damn _intense,_ and, even as he was being pulled closer to the other he hadn’t quite sorted out how to process his feelings.

“Always watching me, and always making jokes.” He laughed too, but Chirrut could detect the genuine annoyance in his tone.

“You hit me for it once.”

“It was a bad joke,” He said with a nod, suddenly a step closer to Chirrut. “But I regret it. I have a lot of regrets, you know--but that’s a big one.”

Chirrut thought it over a moment, then rested his hand over Baze’s heart again. “I forgive you, Baze. I never held it against you in the first place, but I think you know that.”

Nodding, he pursed his lips. “It’s still nice to hear.”

“Do you remember what I told you back then?”

“That you’d help me.”

“Ah--of course, I did.” That was true, but it surprised Chirrut that that was what Baze had held onto the most. “But I also told you I sensed your sadness.”

The Force around Baze seemed, somehow, to flinch. It didn’t grow dark, exactly, but that pain jerked suddenly closer to the surface. “Yes--you did.”

It’s slipped his mind that they were standing around outside having such an intimate conversation--but no one was paying them much mind anyway, and those who might have noticed were probably used to the pair standing around a little too close to still look only friendly. “It’s still there. Less, maybe. But sometimes...it takes over, doesn’t it?”

Baze stiffened. Survival strategies did not tend to include reflecting on one’s own deep-seated pain, nor long-suppressed anguish. He’d lived, and had ended up with the Force and the Temple and Chirrut...and _purpose_. What was the point in slowing down for those old demons to catch up? “Chirrut--” His voice came out softer than he’d intended. “That was a long time ago.”

“It’s part of you...” He trailed off, unsure of where he was headed with the thought, and even less so when Baze snagged his hand and tugged him into the greater privacy of the temple portico.

“You don’t trust me.” This questionable statement was presented very much as a given fact, and for the first time Chirrut realized what an annoying approach it was. But Baze went on before he could object, a flatness in his affect that chilled Chirrut to the bone. “You’ve always trusted me more than anyone else, but it’s not all the way. So why is it? Because you sense _something_? Do you think I’m just waiting to revert to killing and stealing?”

“No.” He frowned. “I just don’t know what to do with you.”

“I have never asked you to save me.” A small smile. “You chose that on your own. But I’m not a skill to perfect or a lesson to learn.” He patted Chirrut’s head fondly. “I’ll always be thankful to you, Chirrut. If you think you have to earn anything more from me, you’re mistaken.”

Chirrut always got a hit in on Baze first, when they fought in earnest then and when they sparred now, but he felt as if he’d been knocked clear across the colonnade with one swift motion. A reader of feelings, Chirrut was not at all accustomed to this quick turn of the tables, least of all from this friend who normally said so little. “I’m--I’m sorry--”

Baze shook his head and pulled him into an embrace.

 _Inseparable_ quickly became the favorite descriptor for Baze and Chirrut among the other residents, even passers-by, at the Temple. The Jedi rejected attachment, but guardians weren’t bound by such laws, and by all accounts it made them stronger--at least the two of them in particular. They trained, worked, slept side by side, more often than not, the bond between them mostly unspoken in any formal sense but so clear to anyone that encountered them that it wasn’t really necessary.

Caught alone one rare moment, a friend--a fellow guardian named Wrai--gave Baze a nudge, and finally asked the right question. “What is it you two share that keeps you together like that?”

Baze thought it over. “Love,” He answered first, shrugging--obvious, perhaps, and more than a little nebulous of an answer. Then, more contemplatively, candidly, “Comfort.”

It didn’t take long for Chirrut to catch wind of this answer, and that night he couldn’t even keep the smirk off his face long enough to properly tease him for it. “I comfort you, do I?”

“That’s not exactly what I said.” He looked amused nonetheless as he laid back for Chirrut to take his usual position with his head on his chest, safe and secure.

“You did too.” He stretched out in his rightful place between Baze’s legs, back pressed flush to his chest in a bratty arch absolutely deliberately intended to be tempting. Head lolling onto his shoulder instead, he regarded him upside-down with a silly grin. “Wrai told me so.”

Baze rolled him over--not a feat to be taken lightly. “I said it’s something we share.”

“I suppose that’s different.”

“It’s different. You bring me comfort, but I do the same for you.” Just this once, he leaned in to rest his head on Chirrut’s chest, and the other ran his fingers through his shaggy hair. “We both need it.”

Baze needed it more, but Chirrut bit back the urge to point it out--so much more than he let on, so much more than Chirrut knew how to give. But he’d spend his whole life trying. He brushed a strand of hair from his partner’s face, putting away the urge to pick on him in this rare moment of softness. Baze’s face was hardened from so many years of suffering, sunburned and scowl-lined, but as Chirrut swept a hand across his cheek, he was the most gentle creature in the galaxy. He would be his solace, as he’d been years ago.

“I’ll always take care of you,” Chirrut promised, and though Baze didn’t answer, Chirrut could feel the Force around him, within him, grow warmer.

 

* * *

 

 

The encroaching Empire was a threat they’d almost become numb to by the time they fully struck. Occupation began years before, more and more kyber leaving the planet for unknown reasons. It upset the guardians, of course, but they had the temple. They had each other, and their freedoms. Until the Empire decided they had too much. It was a twisted irony, that: there was no warning, and all the warning there could possibly be.

They fought to the last, watching friends and enemies alike fall. The Jedi had been gone for years, and lightsabers with them, so it was force pikes and lightbows against the overwhelming force of battalion after battalion, tanks and guns and--it turned Baze’s stomach--riot batons, wielded by those who preferred to get up close and personal. Baze had been that vicious once. He knew it, Chirrut knew it. And there was a flash of fear at the memory when Chirrut saw his partner toss aside his staff and take up the rifles of two stormtroopers he’d just killed, one in each hand, with a look in his eye he hadn’t seen in a very long time.

They didn’t talk about the fight. Both had suffered life-changing injuries--Chirrut’s eyes, sightless, milky-blue white where they were once so dark and deep, became the most telling permanent reminder, but something in Baze was broken just as badly, invisibly. The faith that had drawn him out of darkness was gone, barely-healed patches of his inner self torn apart and raw once more. But--

“I’m still going to take care of you even if I’m blind,” Chirrut murmured against the crown of his head. They were curled together on a cot in the back room of a shop in the city, provided by an elderly woman of whom Baze had always been sure to take care after coming to the temple--a friend of his mother’s, or just someone who had always looked out for him, Chirrut wasn’t sure, and it was no time to ask. “I’m always going to take care of you. But I can’t see, so go easy on me.” He tried to joke, gave him a little squeeze, but was only met with a wracking sob.

They cried in each other’s arms that night, and many to come, for their lost home, friends cut down mercilessly, the darkness descending over their bright spot in the galaxy. Chirrut woke to Baze caressing his face and put his hand over the other’s. Not being able to see him made his heart ache all over again.

“I’m going to protect you, Chirrut.”

“What, no good morning?”

“You are all I have--” His voice cracked painfully. “You’re all I’ve ever had, Chirrut, and I _need you_ \--”

Chirrut sat up, and pulled him close. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“We’ll survive. Yva will let us stay, and we’ll find a way to get offworld. I have a little saved, and we could pay traders to get us to Takodana, or--”

“Are you crazy?” Harsh words flew from his lips before he could stop them. “We can’t _leave_.”

“What’s left here?!” He pulled away, and Chirrut could feel his incredulous stare even if he couldn’t see it. “They destroyed our _home_.”

“So we should run away?”

“We should try to keep _living_.”

“I’m not afraid to die. And neither are you. They have not won.”

Baze was not scared to die, that was true, but the thought of losing Chirrut was unbearable, and the fact that blindness had somehow rendered him even _more_  reckless and willing to fight did not help. “If we die here, do they not win?”

“They win when we give up.”

There was enough conviction in his voice for Baze to believe it, however hesitantly. “Then we stay and fight,” He sighed. “And survive.”

“And I’ll protect you.” Chirrut smiled though it earned him a grunted objection from Baze. Unwarranted, Chirrut thought, as he pulled him into an embrace again. Protection need not come in the form of guns blazing or staff swinging--though a little of that would be needed too--and even if his ability to fight was stifled by his injuries, Baze would need him more than ever.


End file.
